


Sweet Pea

by hoarous



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Culture Shock, F/M, Hatesex, Humor, Sexual Harassment, Xeno, gameplay meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 21:03:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6024769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoarous/pseuds/hoarous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're in the obs deck while the krogan Khel Burrum takes his team of commandos through a hunt mission down in the simulator, and Vidinos is saying something disparaging about humans, maybe about human military tactics or operational discipline or something else equally rude and completely in line with his usual sneering speciesism. Shepard, though not really paying attention, is getting tired of the unpleasant buzz of his voice, so she says, “Sure thing, sweet pea.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet Pea

**Author's Note:**

> For the kink meme prompt:
> 
>  _I was replaying Mass Effect (The first time I’ve done it with access to the Pinnacle Station DLC) You run into a turian who is convinced that no human could beat his scores on the simulator scores without cheating and throws a human in the brig because of this. Being Commander Shepard, you step up and offer to beat all of his high-scores._
> 
> _He tells you that if you can beat ALL of his high scores he will release the human, He’ll even throw in your pick of one of his guns as a trophy._
> 
> _I want a story about Commander Shepard (of either gender) obliterating Vidinos high scores, all the while under his watchful eye to make sure they don’t cheat. When it finally comes time for him to accept defeat he is good to his word and releases the human before offering Shepard the choice of one of his guns._
> 
>  
> 
> _Shepard brushes aside the weapons and requests his personal ‘gun’ as a trophy._

Like many of Shepard’s more awful--or inspired--ideas, it starts out as a joke.

They're in the obs deck while the krogan Khel Burrum takes his team of commandos through a hunt mission down in the simulator, and Vidinos is saying something disparaging about humans, maybe about human military tactics or operational discipline or something else equally rude and completely in line with his usual sneering speciesism. Shepard, though not really paying attention, is getting tired of the unpleasant buzz of his voice, so she says, “Sure thing, sweet pea.”

The whole room seems to freeze for a second. Behind Vidinos’s back, Shepard notices Sergeant Dahga doing the twitchy thing with his mandibles that Shepard has learned to interpret as a sign of suppressed laughter.

“Shepard, I just want to check,” says Tali from the table on Shepard’s left, “did you just call him a food, or a flower? My translator can't seem to resolve the phrasing.”

“It's a human term of endearment,” offers Ashley, grinning, “but I can't see why anyone would use it on him, he's about as sweet as a ghost pepper.”

“Ah, human sarcasm,” says Minket, an improbably young salarian STG candidate. Intellectually, Shepard is aware that salarians mature at a faster rate than just about any other known sapient species, but it's somehow easier to wrap her head around shy, naive Liara being over a hundred years old than this competent, self-possessed salarian being just under fifteen. He continues, “See, this is why I rather like humans, myself. You’re just about the only other species in Council Space with a properly flexible sense of humor.”

“Not the only thing about humans that’s flexible,” says an unfamiliar asari.

“Hardy-har, laugh it up, Sanai,” says Bryant. “You’re the official worst wingman in the galaxy.”

“Hey, what can I say?” says Sanai. “The human ladies love me, loverboy.”

Vidinos turns on his heel and storms out wordlessly.

“Oho! Looks like someone can dish it but can't take it, huh?” says Minket, once Vidinos has disappeared. 

Dahga finally gives up his struggle and starts laughing helplessly.

“ _Sweet pea_ ,” he echoes. “Spirits! Did you see his face as he left?”

“Poor baby,” says Sanai. “Doesn't know what to do with the attention of an attractive alien.”

“Hah! I rather doubt Vidinos actually finds me attractive,” says Shepard.

“Well, maybe Vidinos needs to broaden his horizons, then,” says Sanai. 

\--

Humans like to joke about turians all having sticks up their asses but really, Shepard has found, for the most part it's just culture shock: there’s a lot of context there, compounded by the fact that some fairly important social signals just don't translate very well between species. It's more or less the same sort of thing as krogan thinking salarians are perpetually nervous, or asari thinking human men are all easy. 

Vidinos, however, is the real deal--every negative turian stereotype personified, a genuine stick in the mud and unadulterated asshat. He's gruff and unapproachable to other turians, actively hostile to most humans, and somewhere in the vicinity of unpleasant to snidely dismissive towards anyone else. In essence, a garden-variety bully, made only slightly atypical in Shepard’s experience of the breed for his genuine skill and his spiky alien face. Virtually no one on the station is comfortable with the guy, and the atmosphere in any room palpably tenses when he makes an appearance. He’s like a little concentrated turian-shaped storm cloud of ill portent. 

So after that episode, Shepard sort of just... picks up the habit of casually hitting on Vidinos whenever she speaks to him, which at least seems to do something to alleviate the miasma of discomfort that settles over everyone else whenever he’s around. Nothing overly explicit or aggressive, really, just inappropriately cute nicknames for the most part--epithets like “sugarplum” and “cupcake” that settle on Vidinos about as well as an ugly Christmas sweater on a hanar.

“Why do so many human endearments refer to desserts?” asks Garrus.

“Dunno,” says Shepard. “We’re fond of sweets, I guess.”

“If you’re done flirting with the station staff,” says Ochren, “your simulation has finished loading. Whenever you're ready, Commander.”

“Alright boys, let’s go. Try not to miss me too much while I'm gone, gumdrop.”

“You used that one yesterday,” Vidinos grits out. He might be getting more irritable as Shepard demolishes record after record, but his baseline sour mood is such that it's a little hard to tell. 

“Did I? Sorry, honeybuns, I'll try to make it up to you later.”

Wrex laughs his dark krogan chuckle, and the squad heads into the simulator for another merry round of destroying holograms. 

\--

It’s February 13th when Shepard realizes she's only one simulation away from sweeping the entire scoreboard. What the hell, she thinks. 

“I'm gonna call it a day for now,” she says. 

“What, already?” says Kaidan. “It's barely past noon.”

“I'm feeling a little leisurely,” says Shepard.

“A little… leisurely,” echoes Liara, dubiously.

“Yeah, leisurely,” says Shepard. “I'm heading back to the ship. You guys are free to come back with me or stay here and watch a few matches, maybe socialize a little. Take a half day, however you like.”

“If you say so,” says Liara, and Kaidan says, “You’re the boss,” though they both still seem a little confused. Understandably. Usually she’ll stick around most of the afternoon to watch other people in the sims, even when she doesn't run any herself. 

As she heads towards the airlock, Shepard hears Kaidan say, “Wait, shit. It's the day before Valentine’s Day, isn't it?”

“Valentine?” asks Liara, and Shepard grins. 

She has _plans._ Oh yes.

\--

It takes a bit of doing to scrounge up the materials she's after, but she makes do in the end--with a bewildered assist from Adams, a half-serious threat of blackmail to Joker, and a laughing oath of silence from Ashley.

Shepard spends a happy afternoon with paper and markers and glue--and also a handful of dry rotini liberated from the Normandy’s mess. When she polishes off that final mission tomorrow, she's going to be prepared.

\--

For the final sim, a survive mission, she takes Tali and Wrex. They're all close-range fighters for the most part, which has its limitations--but on the other hand, their styles synchronize flawlessly, and there isn't much the simulator can do to disrupt their formation from afar in the subterranean layout. Shepard parks her squad at a choke point, pointing Wrex in one direction and Tali in the other, with herself angled at an offset between them to provide LOS and support to both sides as necessary. Between Tali’s peerless tech skill and Shepard and Wrex’s combined biotics and firepower, there's very little that manages to round the corner into their killzone and survive for more than a couple seconds. Shepard and her squad settle into a tightly choreographed rhythm of drain-pull-carnage-warp-detonate as wave after wave of simulated hostiles meet their sparking, polygonal demise. 

In the end, it's an overflow error that ends the scenario, crashing the entire virtual environment into flickering translucent orange nothing and blinky warnings in curly salarian script. The three of them emerge from the sim chamber into a cacophony of hoots and cheers.

“Ochren! How long was that?” Shepard shouts over the din.

“The timer checked out about halfway through at forty minutes,” Ochren yells back. “Congratulations, you broke my simulator. Now I’ll probably have to spend days debugging the damned thing.”

“Happy hunting, Ochren!” says Shepard. “Hey, Buttercup! This is for you!”

She hands Vidinos an envelope. It's slightly bulky around the middle. Vidinos, sour-faced as ever (perhaps slightly moreso? It's really quite hard to tell) takes it as though accepting half of a dead songbird from a wayward housepet.

“What--” he begins.

“Human tradition!” yells Shepard, before--unfortunately--being carried off by the exultant, back-slapping crowd of spectators. 

Well nuts, she didn't even get to see him open the thing. 

\--

Some noisy hours later, Shepard wrenches free of her admirers and wanders in the general direction of the airlock. Vidinos ends up waylaying her in a deserted back corner of the command center before she can go find him herself.

“What is the meaning of this?” he asks, thrusting something in her face.

It's the Valentine card she made yesterday. Heart-shaped and studded with pasta, the center of it reads:

 _Roses are red_  
_Violets are blue_  
_Sugar is sweet_  
_And so are you_

 _Incendiary’s red_  
_Cryo is blue_  
_I broke all your records_  
_go cry boo-hoo_

And along the bottom: “Happy Valentine’s Day!” and Shepard’s scrawling signature (which by itself actually makes the whole ridiculous piece of work worth quite a bit of money to the right buyer--not that she really wants to think about that if she can help it, ugh). Ashley had offered to help with the poetry, but Shepard rather felt her own flavor of kindergartener-cum-uncultured-swine better suited the occasion. 

“I told you, didn't I?” she says, fighting the shit-eating grin that wants to break out over her face. “Human tradition. Valentine's Day. Look, it says right there.”

“And what in the seventeen torments is Valentine’s Day?”

“An Earth holiday. Commemorates romance and friendship and so on, on the anniversary of the unjust death of some religious figure from around the time Councilor Tevos was a maiden. Which is today! The day I broke your last record. What a coincidence, huh?”

Vidinos works his mandibles in a gesture that puts Shepard oddly in mind of a human grinding his teeth.

“There’s no way you beat my record legitimately,” he insists. “Ochren said there was a bug in the system.”

“Yeah, a bug caused by how I obliterated the expected limit of the score counter and the program wasn't prepared to handle that,” says Shepard. She spreads her hands in an ironic gesture. “Come on now, snickerdoodle, I don't have time for sore losers.”

“Save the condescension, Shepard. I'll find out how you really did this, and heads will roll,” Vidinos spits, and Shepard suddenly, after all these days of viewing Vidinos’s bald hostility with nothing more than half-hearted exasperation, finds her patience running out.

“Really. How I really did this?” she says, keeping her voice level. “There's no trick to find here, Vidinos. You want to know how I did this? My team is talented and dedicated, and everything I accomplish is from knowing them better than I know myself. That's how. I know what makes them tick. I know their fears and their hopes. I know their every strength and weakness--when they'll hold and where they'll buckle if they can't, and when to stop asking of them before that happens.” Vidinos opens his mouth, but Shepard plows on, raising a hand to point in his face. “You don't like to get along with people. That's fine and dandy for you. But I make it my job to cultivate understanding and a good working relationship with those who serve under me. Because my work is too important, the lives entrusted to me are too many, and the stakes are always, always too high for me to hesitate in the moment of truth because I don't know if and how my people might break when it’s do or die.”

He stares at her, poleaxed silent, and she adds, “And my ground team is put together out of half the major races in Citadel Space, so you can be damn certain there's plenty of bad blood to be found if we care to go sniffing after it. But we prevail in the field, and, yes, in the sims, because we know how to put it all aside like grown-ass professionals and fucking trust each other.” She sighs, the hot bile in her gut finally abating. “That’s how I did it. I’m just a stubborn cuss who’s willing to work for the respect of my people, Vidinos. With a good enough team, anyone could do what I do if they're the right combination of attentive, dedicated, and good at making their own luck.”

Vidinos looks at her strangely for a moment, head tilted slightly sideways, before he says, “That's not the kind of answer I would have expected from a human.”

Shepard throws up her hands.

“There, see? There you go. You’re making it about my species. I’m telling you that’s exactly the wrong thing to focus on.”

Vidinos is still giving her that slightly unnerving look. It takes a moment for Shepard to place what's wrong with it--he actually doesn't look annoyed, for once, although she can't quite place the expression he’s actually wearing, isn't sure she's seen it before on another turian she knows well enough to compare. Aggression? Embarrassment? Assessment?

“Fine. Bryant is clear,” he says, just as she’s gearing up to ask him what the fuck his problem is. “I've had enough of your smug face. I'm out of here.”

Vidinos storms off in his usual roiling thunderhead way, and Shepard shakes her head and turns to leave herself. She’s halfway through the Normandy’s decon cycle before she remembers he'd wagered his gun, which he now rightfully owes her. 

“Whatever,” she mutters to herself. Enough of that guy.

\--

Further intel on Saren still isn't forthcoming, unfortunately, and interminable calls with the Alliance and the Council each have turned up the same word from both directions: wait. So the Normandy and its crew ends up cooling their collective heels at Pinnacle Station for a while longer. Shepard tries not to think too hard about whatever Saren’s getting away with while he's hidden from sight. Instead, she continues to put her ground team through their paces in the simulator, making good use of the new scenarios Ochren has programmed in the wake of his double-time code upgrade. Vidinos sets the high scores in a few scenarios before Shepard gets to them, and she takes a perverse pleasure in beating every one.

She continues to address him by ridiculous sugary pet names, because, well, fuck. Why not?

She's just run out of approved scenarios---and had a quiet word with Ahern about an experimental one that may or may not be in the works--when Vidinos approaches her again.

“Something I can do for you, sunshine?”

He gives her a flat expression before saying, “Look, I don't particularly like talking to you but I seem to remember I wagered my gun that you couldn't beat all my records and you've certainly accomplished that. Let no one say that Vidinos isn't a man of his word.”

Shepard raises her eyebrows.

“What, you're finally conceding that I came by my victory legitimately?”

Vidinos does the grindy-mandibles thing again.

“Just tell me which you want,” he says.

Shepard leans into his personal space.

“And what if I say I want your… other gun?” she says, looking down significantly and then back up through her lashes. 

Vidinos’s mandibles pull completely down and out, and then snap back toward his face with an audible click. Pure, naked shock, thinks Shepard. Well, fuck. That was a little too far for a joke, wasn't it?

She pulls back immediately. 

“Shit, sorry, that was out of line,” she says. “I'm just messing with you. Look, keep your guns, Vidinos. I don't need them.”

“Are you trying to be insulting?” says Vidinos flatly. 

“In case you forgot, I have Spectre requisitions for when I want access to fancy weaponry,” she replies in the same tone. “Keep. Your damn. Guns.”

“You never start making sense, do you?” says Vidinos. Before Shepard can reply, he continues. “Fine. Have it your way. I'm sick of your warped personality.”

He turns to leave. Shepard is about ready to put him out of mind when he says over his shoulder, “Good luck with Ahern’s little project.”

\--

She hangs around after hours that day so they can test Ahern’s apparently-not-so-secret program free of unwanted spectators. Given the particulars of the scenario, Shepard decides to take Garrus and Liara for efficient crowd control and maximum adaptability in range. Neither of them are equipped to handle taking much damage, so this squad lineup tends to put her in the brunt of the fire by herself most of time. But hey, what are vanguards for if not that?

“An interesting choice, bringing your turian and your asari to test the human First Contact War scenario,” Liara muses.

“Well, the two of you do have the best skill complement for the mission parameters,” says Shepard.

“We're the two token Council species out of your entire crew, Commander. Really, it wasn't even a little bit for the irony?” says Garrus.

“You complaining, Vakarian?” says Shepard. “Because it's not too late to go back and grab Ash if you want to tag out. I'm sure she'd jump at the chance to sink her teeth into this one.”

“Not to mention her rifles,” murmurs Liara.

“Oh, no ma'am,” says Garrus, exaggeratedly earnest. “I'm perfectly happy to be ironically complementary, if it's all the same to you, ma'am.”

Shepard laughs. Then the simulator is ready, and it's time to get to business. 

Garrus, of course, she sets up in the closest thing to a sniper’s nest on the map. It's not perfectly placed, the elevation not quite high enough and some areas of the far side obscured by various detritus and rubble, but the cover is good and he can do plenty of damage over most of the field. Liara she orders to a position a bit further ahead, between two pillars and a bit of rubble--the sight lines are almost universally abysmal from that spot, but she's in decent cover with Garrus well placed to watch her exposed flank. The carefully cultivated spatial intelligence of a biotic adept is more than equal to triangulating the placement of mass effect fields through Shepard’s LOS.

When scenario starts to run, the battlefield descends rapidly into barely-contained chaos.

In truth, while the now-infamous sim-buster run with Tali and Wrex was its own sort of fun, it's battles like this one, with constantly changing conditions challenging every ounce of situational awareness and tactical acumen Shepard possesses, that make her blood truly sing. She keeps careful tabs on checkpoints, hostiles, doors opening and closing (and opening and closing and opening and--), and each of her squadmates’ respective position and status. Garrus is able to hold steady in his slightly awkward sniper’s nest, but Liara is forced in a circle around available cover as the direction of engagement shifts, and Shepard has to keep careful watch to ensure she doesn't get flanked, especially when she’s in a spot where Garrus can’t cover her effectively. Still, as awful as the terrain is, they're able to inflict plenty of damage themselves. Liara places singularities flawlessly on Shepard’s command to create artificial choke points, while Garrus alternates between overloads and sniper rifle fire to take advantage of any openings so created. Shepard herself acts as a human wedge, placing herself wherever she needs to be to bodily direct the shape of the conflict around her.

She unavoidably takes a good deal of fire in the meantime. She's probably used more medigel in this single simulation than in the past couple of weeks combined.

Finally the time runs out and the scenario ends, sending the last wave of virtual hostiles dissipating into orange omnifield flickers. Liara collapses onto her back on the floor. 

“Liara!” Shepard calls out in alarm, before she realizes the asari is actually laughing.

“Oh goddess, that was amazing,” Liara gasps. “Like hide and seek. With bullets. I think I need a shower.”

“We’ll make a regular soldier out of you yet, T’Soni,” says Garrus.

“Well, I am certainly starting to appreciate the benefits of the occasional explosion,” Liara says.

“Yeah, really gets the blood pumping, doesn't it?” says Shepard. She offers Liara a hand, pulling her carefully back onto her feet when she takes it. “You gonna be alright?”

“Yes, I'm fine, thank you,” says Liara. “I was a bit over-excited, that's all.”

\--

Shepard sends Liara and Garrus off to find their respective showers and bunks while she debriefs with Ahern and Ochren. She isn't entirely surprised to see Vidinos approaching her once the others have departed, in the now-deserted observation deck.

“The asari--” he begins.

“Liara T’Soni,” says Shepard.

“She spent the practically the whole engagement completely blind.”

“She did,” says Shepard.

“How did she know where to apply her biotics?”

Shepard studies him for a moment, trying to get a bead on what he's getting at.

“Turian operational discipline is infamous,” she says, finally, “but no one matches the asari for communication protocols. Asari commandos operate in small squads on silent espionage missions, with nothing but biotics, light sidearms, subvocal comms, and synced suit data for support, usually in rough terrain with shit visibility. Which is fine for them, because a biotic who can't bend a mass effect field around a blind corner is frankly a godawful damned biotic. If you can have someone else to spot you where you want it to land--well, it'd be a damned pity to put that kind of advantage to waste.

“Liara, now, she's probably the most civilian person on my ship, and that includes most of the human non-combat crew members. She sure as hell doesn't have commando training. What she does have is what the asari consider to be a classical upbringing, which includes adept biotic mastery, familiarity with asari triangulation protocol, and the metric shitload of mathematics and physics that’s part and parcel of both. She always knows where I am, relative to her--not an easy task, in an engagement like that one. I tell her where the singularities need to go, and she makes it happen.

“Tali’Zorah, our quarian engineer, has done some tinkering, and she’s found a way to make asari triangulation techniques work just as well for tech attacks. We’ve integrated it into our operational protocol seamlessly. With Tali’s upgrades, the omnitool handles most of the on-the-fly spatial calculation. Other than Liara, there are three other biotics on my squad, myself included, and we’ve started using Tali’s program to assist with blind vectors, too. Liara, though, she does all that in her head, real-time on the battlefield. And she’d never been in real combat situations before joining up with us--not until a few months ago, when we first fished her out of a dig site that had turned into a combat zone.”

“Why not just share helmet-cam feeds?” says Vidinos.

“Are you kidding me?” says Shepard. “We’re fighting geth out there. Do you have any idea how often our comms are jammed? Besides, that'd draw hardsuit power that’s better put towards boosting our kinetics.”

Vidinos snorts.

“Anyway, Liara’s an academic, if you ask her about this shit she'll just give you an earful of math and history. You really want to know, you should talk to Sanai or C’Sell, or any of their people. They can give you a soldier’s take on it.”

“Is that also how Vakarian was detonating tech mines in his blind spot?”

Figures Garrus would be the member of her squad whose name he actually knew. Shepard says, “Yes, because Vakarian also has Tali’s triangulator installed on his omnitool and knows to jump when I tell him how high. What are you getting at here, Vidinos?”

“You weren't kidding, what you said the other day.”

“I say a lot of things, peaseblossom. You're going to have to be more specific.”

“About fostering trust. Among your crew.”

Shepard rolls her eyes.

“Yes, I was serious when I said that. You think I wouldn't be? You're a soldier as much as I am, Vidinos. You know how critical it is to be able to trust your fellow operatives with your life on the field.”

“I trust my men because I know they're competent. Your T’Soni girl may dress like a soldier, but she's still a civilian.”

“You're questioning her competence?”

“I'm questioning your judgment,” he hisses, advancing into her space. Shepard doesn't budge. “I may not agree with the Alliance's policies but for the most part, it's still all of one piece. The soldiers receive the same training, follow the same rules, adhere to the same system. Your crew, though--your entire operation is a fluke. A monstrosity. An asari academic, a wayward turian operative, some quarian transient, and that damned krogan?” He grabs her by the shoulders--Shepard deliberately suppresses the urge to react with a joint lock, since the motion is sloppy and telegraphed and clearly more blind emotion than conscious intent to harm--and pushes her up against the bulkhead, using his superior height and bulk to loom over her. “You think you have them all figured out, don't you? But it's only a matter of time before something finds a convenient crack and breaks it all to pieces.”

Shepard tilts her chin up, staring him down. 

“This about the Normandy, Vidinos, or Pinnacle Station?”

Vidinos lets out a wordless snarl, and Shepard, deciding she's had enough, twists out of his grasp and neatly drops him to the floor.

The thing about engaging turians at close quarters is that they're stronger, faster, and have better reach than any human… but they're also built for speed and power at the expense of stability and long-term endurance. The best tactic is to go in low, take them off their feet whenever possible, and, if necessary, to outlast them.

Shepard places a heavy foot on the sweeping dorsal curve of Vidinos’s cowl. 

“That was stupid of you,” she says, leaning down to address his prone form--and incidentally applying more weight to the foot on his back. “You seem to keep forgetting I'm a Spectre. Did you think that was just a political appointment? The Council doesn't carry deadweight, sweetheart--not in this department, anyway.”

Vidinos mutters a low curse that Shepard’s translator doesn't catch.

“Sorry, darling,” she says, “Didn't quite catch that. Say again?”

He curses again--a longer one this time, even sounds like there might be some grammatical structure in there, not that Shepard can begin to decipher it. Then he says, “What is this, Shepard? Are we going to fuck or are you just trying to humiliate me?”

That brings her up short. Somehow, she'd never actually considered the possibility that he'd taken any of her flirting seriously.

“Is that what you want, Vidinos?” she says, to cover up her surprise. “Boy, you sure know how to sweet-talk a woman.”

He makes a frustrated low rumbling sound.

“Or is this about what I said earlier today? Because I'm not about to fuck you just because you think you owe me something. I like to think I'm not that kind of asshole.”

Vidinos lets out another long grumble, which eventually rises to clarity and resolves into, “Yes, damn you, Shepard, that's what I want. Spirits forsake you and all your descendants into the eleventh generation.”

“Your spirits probably wouldn't know what to do with my descendants anyway,” says Shepard absently. She studies his profile, twisted awkwardly to the side to glare up at her, as much as he’s able, around the back edge of his cowl. His limbs are all free, and the only thing keeping him pinned is Shepard’s comparatively meager weight; really, he could probably push her off and have another go at it if he cared to. Perhaps he's simply put off by how quickly and easily she took him down the first time, but that he hasn't even tried again is pretty telling. 

Well, what the hell, thinks Shepard. You only live once, right?

She takes quick mental stock of the local terrain. Ah, a table, three o’clock. Perfect. Decision made, she hauls Vidinos up and throws him onto it on his back. 

Vidinos takes a rattling gasp of breath and Shepard says, “You're going to have to help me out here, I have no fucking clue how your armor works.”

Vidinos gives her a beady-eyed look.

“What, you've never fucked Vakarian?” he says, sounding genuinely surprised. His hands start working on the seals of his armor. Shepard starts doing the same for herself. 

“No, because human military discipline entails not shitting where you eat.”

“What the fuck does that have to do with--”

“It means we don't fuck around with the people we have to maintain professional working relationships with, Vidinos, because the conventional wisdom among my people is that sex can seriously mess that up.”

His hands still and he gives her an astonished look. After a moment, he manages, “Turians believe the opposite.”

“That working relationships are bad for sex?”

“That sex is an effective method to establish and maintain good working relationships,” he says. His tone strongly implies that she's an idiot.

“Duly noted,” she says. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

“With the incestuous way your squad operates, I was sure you must have been in bed with all of--nghk!” he cuts off abruptly as Shepard grasps his now-exposed sex.

“Is that what that was all about, Vidinos?” she says, climbing onto the table to hover above him. “You've got some kind of complex about... interspecies liaising?” She punctuates the last couple of words by pumping his cock roughly in time with the cadence of her speech. 

Vidinos lets out a rattling hiss.

“By the way, studmuffin,” says Shepard conversationally, “crash course on human etiquette: not very polite to speculate too much on a lady’s prior conquests. Not unless she gives you permission.” She squeezes her grip up the length of his cock and flutters her fingers softly back down.

“F-fuck,” he gasps.

“Patience,” says Shepard. “Damn though, you've been ready to go for a while, haven't you?”

Vidinos sucks in another unsteady breath. “I was watching you in the simulator,” he says. “You moved like. Like. Spirits, I just wanted to get my hands on your skin. Wanted--” and then he dissolves into a clicking whine that may or may not actually contain some garbled words, Shepard isn't sure and doesn’t particularly care, as she finally pushes down and impales herself roughly on his cock.

She's slightly less prepared than she probably should be, in truth, not to mention that both of them are still partially dressed, though the most immediately relevant pieces are all out of the way. Still, the sloppiness of it, the friction and the slick heat and the slight touch of pain, all suit her current mood perfectly fine. Once she hits bottom, Shepard moves her hips slowly, experimentally. Vidinos is shaped differently than a human, the angle and curvature not quite what she's accustomed to.

After a moment, his hands settle tentatively, almost shyly, on her hips. Well, alright then.

Shepard presses him down by his shoulders into the hard surface of the table so she can ride his cock, ratcheting up into a fast, rough pace. Vidinos lets out a small, shocked sound. His eyes close and his head tilts back so that his fringe hangs off the edge of the table, and he starts making a quiet, periodic buzzing moan in the back of his throat in time with her rhythm. His hands have traveled upward to her waist, and he's drawing shaky, eccentric circles on her skin with the points of his claw-like fingers as she moves.

There's something compelling about seeing him like this. Having him like this. Stripping away all the bullshit posturing and aggression and making him come apart helplessly underneath her. 

Shepard leans forward over Vidinos, pressing her breasts to his chestplate, her hips still moving. She grabs his face in one hand, tilting it towards herself, and murmurs, “Hey. Look at me. Pay attention.” His eyes open, locking onto hers, mere inches away. “You're on your back for a human, Vidinos. You don't get to pretend that's not exactly what’s going on here. How does it feel, sweet pea?”

She clenches around him and he growls again, more desperately this time. His hands spasm on her skin, his hips jerking futilely against poor leverage underneath her. Shepard figures that means she’s more or less won this encounter, so she lets go as well, moving faster, willing her climax to well up from the heat between her legs, allowing it to crest in a wash of pleasure over her head.

When it subsides, Vidinos is still staring fixedly at her with his beady little eyes. His mandibles are hanging in slack, lopsided shock as he pants open-mouthed, and he's still wearing about half of his armor.

He looks ridiculous.

“You look ridiculous,” says Shepard.

“Fuck you,” says Vidinos, without heat.

“Just did,” she says cheerfully, and carefully climbs off of him. Vidinos makes a small breathy sound when she slides free of his cock.

Shepard gets off the table and stretches with a luxurious sigh. Then she sets to putting herself back together.

“Council finally came through with the intel they've been promising me for the past few weeks,” she says as she zips up her thinsuit layer. “Can't tell you where we’re headed, but the Normandy will be underway tomorrow. We’ll be out of your hair--fringe--soon, and you can work on getting some of those records back. Or you can try, anyway.” She grins at him. “And try not to miss me too much, yeah?”

Vidinos, still splayed on his back on the table, manages to snort at her. The sentiment is rather lost in his fucked-sloppy everything.

Shepard finishes buckling the last pieces of her armor on and starts to make her way back to the Normandy.

“It's been real fun, cupcake,” she says, giving him a pat on the top of his head as she passes him. “I’ll see you when I see you.”

\--

_Three years later_

Vidinos gets that flat look on his face when he steps out of Cortez’s shuttle and realizes exactly whose ship is evacing him out of Reaper territory. Not too surprising, since the rescue mission was led by Vega and Javik, neither of whom had been on the first Normandy with the crew that he'd known.

“Sweet pea!” says Shepard, throwing her arms out.

“Sweet Pea?” echoes Vega, and Dahga, following Vidinos out of the shuttle, laughs.

“Shepard,” says Vidinos, in a tone of utter defeat.

“And Dahga, too,” says Shepard. “Mimanox ever return your calls?”

“Mimanox?” says Vidinos, incredulous.

“Nah,” says Dahga. “Actually, I last I heard, he's taken up with Bryant now.”

“You're kidding me,” says Shepard.

“I wish. They're disgustingly cute. All domestic-like. Just as well he wasn't into me, I'm not the broody sort myself.”

“I haven't heard of any of this,” says Vidinos.

“That's because everyone knows you don't care for gossip, sir,” says Dahga.

“Ahern was recalled to the Alliance fleet when Earth was hit,” says Shepard. “I don't see Ochren or Tahoka, though. They ok?”

“They fucking abandoned us,” says Dahga.

“They both went to work for Armax R&D two years ago,” says Vidinos.

“Damn,” says Shepard. “I had no idea Tahoka was a techhead.”

Vega, watching them with interest, says, “Hang on, Lola. When was the last time you saw any of these guys?”

“Two--no, three years ago, thereabouts,” says Shepard.

“Of course, Shepard remembers everyone,” calls out Cortez from behind the shuttle. 

“What he said.”

“Of course,” snorts Vidinos.

“So, you ever beat my records?”

Vidinos opens his mouth, but Dahga preempts him with, “Your scores stood unbeaten for about a year, and then we had a catastrophic data failure just after we lost Ochren and had to reset everything.”

“Yes, that,” says Vidinos, sourly. Shepard laughs.

“You seem to have mellowed out a bit,” she observes. (“Mellowed out?” echoes Vega, disbelieving.)

“That happened around the time you left, actually,” says Dahga. “We figured you must have either beat him up or fucked him. Maybe both.”

Vega makes a choking sound.

“I'm told it's rude to speculate about a human woman’s sex life,” says Vidinos, with the tired air of someone who's said the same thing many times, but Shepard just laughs again.

“Little of column A, little of column B, actually.”

“Yeah, there were pretty good odds on it being both.”

Vidinos grumbles to himself, and Shepard--pointedly ignoring Vega’s peanut gallery hysteria--rubs her hands together and says, “Alright. Enough small talk. You may have noticed that there's a galaxy-wide invasion happening right about now. Well, I'm here to put a stop to it, and I'm not going to rest until I have every damned gun in the galaxy pointed at the problem.”


End file.
